The idea of schools being the hub for a range of public services, an idea reportedly being considered by the Labour shadow education team, is an attractive one. Health, social, welfare and other services would operate from within and around schools in the vision being advocated by Labour supporters and detailed in a recent Tes Daily Briefing (sign up, details are here).

In “normal” times it frequently appears that public services do not work together as effectively as they should in the interests of our children. And there is often mistrust, in particular between schools and social services, with both professions lacking a full understanding of the other. Moreover, savage cuts to the whole range of support services have left schools carrying impossible burdens as almost the last institutions left standing.

However, there have been many places where attempts have been made to develop a more local-based and holistic approach to the provision of services.

Education hubs

In London in the 1970s, for example, several new Community Schools were constructed. There were variations in their provision, but many had a nursery, social services, a youth centre and an old people’s day centre - and, in some cases, a base for the police.

There was considerable enthusiasm initially and a desire to make it work but, gradually, problems were encountered; there was a limited willingness to be flexible, and these institutions have nearly all reverted to being “just schools”. 

If we are considering this approach again - and we should give the concept serious consideration - it is crucial that we work out why this and other similar projects across the country have, in the main, failed.

One major problem arises from the fact that our public services operate in silos with the key line management, responsibilities and accountabilities aligned “vertically” with their home departments (both locally and nationally) - not with place, not with the local community. Taking so many schools out of local authority (LA) oversight has made this worse as there is no organisation to which all local services are accountable.

Added to this, there is a strong tendency for services to be protective and defensive. If we are to make progress with locally-based integrated services, we will need to address these issues, give “place” a higher priority and give power to the local leaders on site in these hubs.

Joined-up children’s services

In addition, unfortunately, our public services - education, social services, housing, health, police, etc - frequently serve different geographical areas. Any one pupil might attend school in one LA, live and have a social worker in another and be treated by a different health authority.

And once you start to try and plan for schools as the focus for more integrated service provision, a whole range of significant issues would need to be resolved, many of them political: would it be voluntary for schools to participate or compulsory? Would all schools be involved or only those somehow selected? How would this work with denominational schools or grammar schools serving wide geographical areas? Where would multi-academy trusts (MATs) that, in many cases, have schools in several LAs fit in? If MATs did host LA services, would this remove more services from democratic management? Who will plan provision and ensure it is equitable? Where would any capital costs come from, especially given the fact that many schools are in very poor condition structurally?

International comparisons are fraught with risk and ideas are rarely transferable wholesale, but we could learn not just from our own history but from the experience of others.

For example, the Harlem Children’s Zone was established in New York with one purpose: to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. They realised from the outset that the only way to do this was to have an integrated approach to all public services and that traditional loyalties would have to change, with place having priority.

Two key principles need to be adhered to in planning this kind of integration.

School-led provision

First, it can’t be seen as a takeover by any one discipline at the expense of the autonomy of others. Tacking a few support workers onto a school staff is not the answer.

Secondly, provision needs careful planning and commissioning across an area. It can’t be the result of individual initiatives or competitive bids.

The prize of integrated services working together for the benefit of our young people, particularly those from less advantaged backgrounds, is worth fighting for, but we should not underestimate the complexity of this.

Perhaps most of all, it must be recognised that this is not a clever way of coping with the cuts in so many services. To work, it will require a renewed commitment to joint planning and delivery at a local level but also the rebuilding of all the community services, without which there will be nothing to integrate.

Alasdair Macdonald is a former headteacher of Morpeth School and chair of the New Visions for Education Group